R&B/Hip-Hop

There will never be enough time or space to recognize all the unsung heroes and trailblazers in the music industry that deserve to be acknowledged. But as Black History Month winds down, one pioneer stands out: Regina Jones, former co-owner and editor-in-chief of the groundbreaking music and entertainment publication, SOUL Newspaper.

Predating Rolling Stone and Creem, Los Angeles-based SOUL became a cultural force as the first-of-its-kind newspaper chronicling Black music and entertainment from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s. That period saw the publication expand its reach and impact from local to nationwide and then international as it covered icons-in-the-making such as Quincy Jones, Richard Pryor, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder. SOUL and Jones’ intertwined journeys unfold in the new documentary, Who in the Hell Is Regina Jones?

As Jones notes in the documentary, SOUL was inspired by the flames that erupted during the Watts Riots in August 1965. She was 21, a mother of five and married to aspiring news reporter and radio DJ Ken Jones — later to become L.A. television’s first Black weeknight news anchor in L.A. She was also working as an LAPD dispatcher on the second shift when she took the first distress call about the riots on Aug. 11, after which she alerted her husband, who filed on-the-street radio reports during the six-day tumult.

“As we watched the riots happening and saw our neighborhood burning,” Jones tells Billboard, “Ken said, ‘Something needs to be done for our people.’ That’s when he came up with the idea to start a newspaper primarily about Black music and entertainment. He was the visionary; I was the nuts-and-bolts implementer. That’s how SOUL was born.”

Less than a year later, the first 15-cent, eight-page weekly was published. Dated April 14, 1966, the cover featured James Brown and Mick Jagger alongside the headline, “White Artists Selling Negro ‘Soul.’” The first run sold 10,000 copies. By 1967, the newspaper had expanded to 16 pages published twice a month.

“It was hard work,” Jones recalls with a laugh about putting the issues together on their dining room table “with my five kids around me” before moving the operation into an office. At that point she had quit her LAPD job and was wearing several hats: handling the phone as the receptionist, hustling advertising and negotiating with distributors before adding editor-in-chief stripes after husband Ken clinched the television anchor gig.

Among the innovative business strategies that Regina employed at SOUL was partnering with R&B radio stations around the country — such as KGFJ in L.A., WOL in Washington, D.C. and WWRL in New York — to publish branded editions with charts and advertisements provided by these local Black stations and DJs. At one point, SOUL’s reach was certified at 125,000 copies. And its key international markets included England and Japan.

SOUL’s pivotal role in raising visibility and awareness of Black music and artists was a crucial and influential turning point. But there were other uphill battles as well that Jones fought. Like when Donna Summer was the cover subject. Her team was going to give SOUL an image taken by a Caucasian photographer. “And I said, ‘No,’” remembers Jones. “’If you want her to be in SOUL, my photographers have to do the shoot.’” Summer’s team finally acquiesced. And instead of the 40-60 minutes originally slotted for the shoot, Summer gave the photographer four hours.

“I had to do things like that, call people out,” adds Jones. “I was a very militant young Black woman, so I immediately had to start hiring people of color.” With her self-described “foot on your butt” management style, she nurtured a staff of future stars in their own right. Among the names Jones proudly reels off are noted photographers Bruce Talamon and Howard Bingham, ex-SOUL editor/Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Leonard Pitts and journalists/writers Steve Ivory, Mike Terry and Connie Johnson.

By the early ‘80s, as the documentary relates, SOUL had gone monthly owing to the economic climate draining the ad pool plus burgeoning competition from other mainstream publications starting to tap into the Black music scene. And after 20-some years, Jones and husband Ken were divorcing. SOUL’s final issue was published May/June 1982. Donated to UCLA and Indiana University in 2010, the SOUL archives were digitized by Jones’ grandson Matt Jones and made available online in 2023.

But Jones wasn’t finished yet. She tells Billboard that she was “brought back to life” a year later when Black label executive Dick Griffey of SOLAR Records recruited her as his VP of publicity. At the time, the label’s roster included Shalamar, the Whispers, Lakeside, Midnight Star, The Deele and Klymaxx. While there, Jones also handled publicity for Jesse Jackson when Dick Griffey Productions signed on as West Coast manager for Jackson’s 1984 presidential run. Jones shares that it was she and OLAR promotion executive Darryl Stewart who orchestrated Jackson’s host gig on Saturday Night Live — the very first presidential candidate to do so.

Three years later, Jones launched her own PR firm. Among Regina Jones & Associates’ clients were Geffen and Capitol Records, the Black Women’s Forum and actress Cicely Tyson. A major client for 13 years was the NAACP Image Awards. Jones then joined the staff of Crystal Stairs, a well-known childcare development agency on the West Coast.

All of which is chronicled in Who In the Hell is Regina Jones?, which has been shown at the New Orleans Film Festival and Pan African Film Festival. “I wish I could tell you that I woke up one day and decided I wanted to be in the music business, a publisher, a publicist or fundraiser,” reflects Jones. “My life has been a lot of surprise gifts and blessings.”